I can’t sleep. Our flight was delayed nine hours and we didn’t get to bed until 3:30 am. The air conditioning is beautiful, and I have never been more tired. All I want is to rest. But I can’t sleep.
What day is it today? I don’t remember anymore.
I go out and sit on the balcony. The sun is just coming up over the ancient city of Hanoi. The people get up and go to bed with the sun, and the streets are already swarming with people. Horns beep, not angrily, but an intermittent form of communication between lumbering trucks and the hundreds of tiny scooters and motorcycles that clog the intersections and roundabouts. Two beeps if you are passing on the right. Three to warn a pedestrian. A long and angry blast if someone tries to do something stupid. No one ever stops. It is a beautiful creature, flowing in and out of the streets, fluid and effortless.
The women are covered head to toe, though it is a horrific 97 degrees with humidity. They wear stockings under their high-heeled sandals, long pants, jackets, hats, and even scarves to cover their faces completely. Usually there are two people on a scooter, perhaps three. Some girl pulls out her phone to text her boyfriend. A cage full of chickens drives by, looking quite unimpressed strapped on the back of an old Vespa. One woman has at least 100 pounds of fruit in crates stacked around her. I wonder how her bike manages.
The road is dusty and downright dirty. Occasionally the smell of noodles floats across the air, sometimes a putrid combination of waste and too much sweat. There is barley laid out on large tarps, and traffic politely avoids running it over. Bark from cinnamon trees is laid out to dry. Voices are raised in an argument about how much mangos should cost. Barefoot children chase each other in and out of traffic, seemingly oblivious to danger. A shirtless man sits in his little plastic chair and watches the people go by while he eats his noodles.
I faintly remember when my dreams used to look a lot different. I wanted a house on a big piece of land. A car, a fireplace, and coffee every morning with pancakes. Of someone to make dinner with and do laundry for. A degree, an occasional mission trip to the third world. To be put together, to be polished, respected, secure.
But in this moment, those dreams seem so funny now, so far away from this chaos, this messy place.
The season has changed.
I realize that somehow, I want to live in this dirt and love the people who hate me. To gladly give all that I have to people who can never repay me; Not only my money, but my life, my very self. I now dream of no running water and sweat and blood and tears. Of being broken again and again by Jesus, so that I may love the world as He does. To fade slowly from the polished things of the world into the hidden recesses of the poor and broken.
And I’m not entirely sure when it happened.
Won’t you tell me, Lover of my soul
Where do You feed Your flock?
Where do You lead Your beloved ones
To rest in the heat of the day?
For I wish to be wrapped all around you.
Let your dreams be changed.
Beth
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